Anthropologists work at the Carlisle Indian School Cemetery to return 5 more children remains
By Matt Barcaro
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Pennsylvania (WGAL) — Starting on Monday, a team of archeologists and a forensic anthropologist will be working at five graves at the Carlisle Indian School Cemetery.
They’ll work to recover and examine the remains below so that they can be reburied in tribal lands.
The nearly 200 children who were buried in this cemetery were students at the Carlisle Indian School, which was the first federally funded off-reservation Native American boarding school in the country.
Through the Carlisle Indian School digital resource center, we’ve found the pictures of three of the five children who are the focus of this year’s disinterment program.
Lawney Shorty from the Blackfeet tribe in Montana and Edward Spott from the Puyallup tribe in Washington State.
Archeologists are also planning to exhume the remains of Edward Upright from the Spirit Lake Tribe in North Dakota, Beau Neal from the Northern Arapaho Tribe in Wyoming, and Amos Lafromboise from the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate Tribe in South Dakota.
Laframboise was the first student at the Carlisle Indian School to die in 1879.
He was originally buried in Carlisle’s Ashland Cemetery, but his remains were removed because the cemetery was deemed to be for whites only.
Representatives from the families or tribes will be coming to Carlisle to receive the remains of their children over the next two weeks.
“Providing closure is probably too simple of a word to use. It’s more of a healing journey for the tribes and families, and just the little part we play in helping to respectfully disinter the children and return them in a dignified manner is priceless for us,” the office of Army Cemeteries Director Rena Yates said.
Since the army started this program in 2017, it has returned the remains of 28 children to their loved ones.
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